I was swinging from the tree branches, the tire swing spinning out of control. Amir was watching from the sidelines.

At last I jumped off of the tire swing and rolled into the grass.

Amir was laughing at how my skirt was now stained with green. I didn’t care. I got up and walked over to her and stood beside her.

“I haven’t seen the sunset like this before,” I said, recalling the sky filled with pink and orange and red and yellow.

Amir grinned. “When we were little, we used to lay outside and reach our hands up to the sky above,” she mused. “I’m not sure about what you thought of it but I was convinced that I could touch the great moving clouds if I extended my arms a little farther.” She finished off by laying down in the grass.

I lay down next to her and pulled the crawling ladybug from her hair. “The clouds are just like happiness,” I said, thinking about all the struggles I’ve gone though.

Amir tilted her head to look at mine. “Sometimes happiness is so close, yet so far away.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking hard. I wished it was easy to be happy. I wish that I were little again, where I rarely had bad days.

These days it felt like I rarely had good days.

But maybe I could heed my sister’s words. What if I extended my arms a little more? What if I could find happiness, or even just accept the cloudy days I had?

That didn’t seem too bad. I could take it one cloudy day at a time. Soon, the sun would come.

I wrapped an arm around my sister. Maybe I didn’t need happiness right now. Maybe all I needed was what was right next to me.